


1976

by saltstreets



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1976 and you're sitting in a bar in London.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1976

It’s 1976 and you’re sitting in a bar in London –this is a _bar_ , too, not a pub, but a bar with metal countertops and a spinning electric top hanging from the ceiling making your head hurt- and you’re congratulating yourself on a fat cheque and a new acting engagement all in one day, when he walks in.

He’s wearing the same old coat but the scarf is new, and while his skin still has the familiar waxy cast of illness to it, his hair is combed back immaculately and his stride has the same swagger that you remember from the old days. He doesn’t look as you had seen him last; lost, destitute, and wasting. He is as you had first met him all those years ago. Alive and confident in that fact.

He doesn’t see you. You’re sure of that, and so you sink into your shoulders and shake your cap down slightly over your eyes. For a moment you had thought about shouting out to him, but then your brain had caught up to your heart.

And so you hide.

Then you see the second figure trailing behind him- a shadowy, rescinding form; a boy not younger than you. He strides to the bar and orders in the carrying voice that you’d always thought would have been wonderful for the stage. (But then again, whispers an insidious voice in the back of your skull, not all men were meant to play the Dane.) (It’s a part I intend to play, comes the mocking reply, his voice perfectly preserved in your memory, the bastard.)

He sits at the bar with his companion and although you try not to be, you are reminded inexorably of yourself. Despite your earlier reservations, you are seized by a sudden mad desire to stroll over to them and offer polite greetings. To introduce yourself to the new young man and force Withnail to admit that he’d never mentioned your name to anyone.

But you’d told him to go home and that was all the closure you needed. You stand and head towards the exit. His voice suddenly rises above the babble in a triumphant exclamation and for a wild second you think he’s seen you, you think he’s welcoming you, you think- but the cry sinks back down beneath the noise of the bar and he has not noticed you.

It doesn’t matter, you tell yourself. He would have made a terrible Hamlet.


End file.
